Where the MAUSD budget grew.

The whole budget and the student count

Where the numbers come from. MAUSD's annual reports and budget-detail documents print the budget office's own summary, seventeen functions with object lines beneath, but its actuals stop at FY2023, and from the FY2026 budget the district moved to a different presentation of eighteen “tabs” that prints budgets only. The one record that runs the whole window on one set of rows is the audited financial statements (Smith & Company, certified public accountants, Buxton, Maine), whose Schedule B, “Schedule of Departmental Operations, General Fund”, lists about forty-five rows in ten groups with the original budget, the final budget and what was spent, for every year FY2019 through FY2025. The auditor's opinion says the schedule “is fairly stated, in all material respects, in relation to the basic financial statements as a whole.” The page is built on that schedule; the district's own tables are used for the budgets after FY2025 and are in the functions CSV in full.

One district, then a smaller one. Lincoln withdrew from MAUSD: the State Board of Education approved the withdrawal in May 2022 and MAUSD educated Lincoln's students through June 30, 2023 (2023 annual report, p. 5). From FY2024 the budget is “for 4 elementary schools & Mount Abraham MS/HS”, and the district itself calls a comparison with prior years “misleading” (2023 annual report, p. 45). No prior-year column was restated. So the FY2025 side of every comparison on this page is a district without Lincoln Community School and its costs; the student count drops Lincoln (70 students in FY2023) at the same point, so that spending and students are the same set of schools in each year.

Between FY2020 and FY2025, MAUSD general-fund spending (the audit's total of departmental operations) rose 11.6%, from $29.7M to $33.2M. The original budget rose 14.3% over the same years, from $31.0M to $35.4M; the budget has since gone to $34.9M adopted for FY2026 and $37.9M proposed for FY2027, warned for the March 3, 2026 vote (the result is not in the documents used). Over the FY2020–FY2025 window the state's fall count of students in the schools MAUSD ran fell 15.0%, from 1,476 to 1,254. Spending per student, the total divided by that count, rose 31.4%, from $20,136 to $26,456. Counted on all six schools in FY2025 (1,354 students, Lincoln included), it would be $24,502.

Consumer prices rose 23.5% over the same five fiscal years (the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U, FY2020 average to FY2025 average; June 2020 to June 2025, 25.1%). Spending, at 11.6%, rose less than the 23.5% rise in consumer prices; spending per student, at 31.4%, rose more than the 23.5% rise in consumer prices. FY2023 is the one year in the window where spending ($33.3M) ran over the original budget ($32.6M).

The enrollment series runs longer than the budget window. Since FY2005 the fall count of the schools MAUSD ran is down 34.4%, from 1,912 to 1,254; Mt Abraham Union Middle/High alone is down 41.5%, from 959 to 561.

The state's measure. The Agency of Education sets the homestead tax rate on education spending per weighted pupil: the adopted budget less offsetting revenues, divided by the state's weighted pupil count. For FY2026 that figure is $14,719 per long-term weighted ADM (1,938.61 weighted pupils; rank 41 of 128 districts). The pupil measure changed in FY2025 under Act 127, so the chart below draws the years before and after apart. The FY2027 figure as printed on the district's own AOE form is $15,132 (proposed).

Change by group

The audit totals the general fund in ten groups: seven sections with a printed subtotal (regular programs, support services, administration, operations and maintenance, transportation, debt service, transfers to other funds) and three rows it prints on their own and adds straight into the total (special education, vocational education, capital outlay). Those ten are the functions here; the audit rows inside each are one level down. Every figure is district-wide; the audit prints no per-school split.

Ranked by percent change between the FY2020 and FY2025 actuals, the increases were capital outlay (+88.5%, +$1.01M); transportation (+55.5%, +$0.55M); vocational education (+51.8%, +$0.39M); administration (+43.4%, +$1.58M); transfers to other funds (+41.1%, +$0.10M); operations and maintenance (+25.5%, +$0.69M); support services (+5.8%, +$0.27M). Spending rose 11.6% over the same window and consumer prices 23.5%, so a group above those lines grew faster than the budget as a whole and faster than prices. Three groups were lower in FY2025 than in FY2020: debt service (−70.1%, −$0.14M); regular programs (−7.7%, −$0.95M); special education (−1.5%, −$0.05M). The toggle on the chart switches to the original budgets for the same two years.

The same groups, per student

Dividing each group by the year's student count puts the spending change and the enrollment change on one line. Per student, every group that grew in dollars shows a larger percent increase than in dollars, because the FY2025 count is lower. Debt service is lower per student; Regular programs is higher per student; Special education is higher per student.

Per student, the largest percent increases were capital outlay (+121.9%, $771 → $1,711); transportation (+83.0%, $674 → $1,234); vocational education (+78.7%, $506 → $905). Every group is in the table under the chart.

These figures say what was spent and how many students there were. They do not say why a group grew. Was it a contract, a state requirement, a building, a program moved from another fund, a cost that does not move with the student count, or the smaller district after Lincoln left? The audit rows below are where that question starts.

The biggest changes in dollars, one level down

Ranked by the size of the dollar change, up or down, the three groups that moved most between the FY2020 and FY2025 actuals were administration (+$1.58M, +43.4%); capital outlay (+$1.01M, +88.5%); regular programs (−$0.95M, −7.7%). Capital outlay is a single audit row with nothing printed beneath, so it has no further breakdown. Administration and Regular programs are shown the same way the groups were shown above. First, change by audit row, in percent and in dollars side by side; then the same rows per enrolled student; then the full table of printed rows with the original budget beside the actual. Rows the audit stopped printing by FY2025 (special education administration, sPED health services, student transportation - SPED) are listed without a change figure.

Major line-item contributors, in dollars

Across every group, the audit rows with the largest dollar change, up or down. The five largest were direct instruction in regular programs (−$1.09M, −9.3%); capital outlay in capital outlay (+$1.01M, +88.5%); operations and maintenance of plant in operations and maintenance (+$0.89M, +38.2%); student transportation - resident in transportation (+$0.74M, +111.9%); and office of the Superintendent in administration (+$0.44M, +92.7%). The fifteen on the chart, decreases netted against increases, sum to 94% of the net change in the total, the FY2025 total less the FY2020 total (+$3.45M).

The biggest changes in percent, one level down

Ranked by the size of the percent change, up or down, the three groups that moved most between the same two actuals were capital outlay (+88.5%, +$1.01M); debt service (−70.1%, −$0.14M); transportation (+55.5%, +$0.55M). Capital outlay is in both groups; its rows are shown once, under the dollar group above. Debt service and Transportation get the same three views.

Major line-item contributors, in percent

Across every group, the audit rows with the largest percent change, up or down, among rows of at least $50,000 in FY2025 actual. The floor keeps off the chart rows that are small in both years, where a change of a few thousand dollars is a large percent. The five largest were occupational therapy services in support services (+1454.4%, +$0.06M); attendance and social work services in support services (+220.7%, +$0.17M); other administration in administration (+154.5%, +$0.14M); extra/co-curricular trips in transportation (+117.0%, +$0.05M); and student transportation - resident in transportation (+111.9%, +$0.74M).

The district's new budget structure: eighteen tabs

The audit gives the auditor's groups. The district's own presentation changed with the FY2026 budget: in place of the seventeen functions used through FY2025 it now prints eighteen numbered “tabs” (school-based teaching staff, other school-based staff, special education, central office, shared healthcare costs, utilities, transportation, legal, two supplies-and-services tabs, vocational education, athletics and co-curricular, professional development, facilities and maintenance, food service, debt service, technology, professional services), each with line detail beneath. The district restated the FY2025 adopted budget into the tabs itself, so the two years the structure covers can be compared: FY2025 adopted to FY2027 proposed, +7.0% on the total. These are budgets, not spending; no actual has been printed in the tab structure.

Sources, method and caveats

Every number on this page comes from a table printed in one of the documents linked below, all from the district's Budget Information page (annual reports, “Proposed Budget and Detail” documents and the audited financial statements, each a Google Drive file linked from that page), or from the Vermont Agency of Education's enrollment collection. The tables were extracted from the PDFs and checked by footing and by the audits' own arithmetic (variance = budget less actual on every row; the ten groups of Schedule B equal the ten categories of the audit's Schedule 1 in every year). The cross-year series built from them, with each figure's document and page, are the CSV downloads at the top of the page.

• 2020 MAUSD Annual School Report including Proposed FY21 Budget, 60 pages.
• 2021 MAUSD Annual School Report including Proposed FY22 Budget, 48 pages.
• 2022 MAUSD Annual Report including Proposed FY23 Budget, 60 pages.
• 2023 MAUSD Annual Report including Proposed FY24 Budget, 64 pages.
• 2024 MAUSD Annual Report including Proposed FY25 Budget, 60 pages.
• 2025 MAUSD Annual Report including Proposed FY26 Budget, 56 pages.
• 2026 MAUSD Annual Report including proposed FY27 Budget, 56 pages.
• Proposed Budget Summary and Detail FY21, 6 pages.
• Proposed Budget Summary and Detail FY22, 6 pages.
• Proposed Budget and Detail FY23, 6 pages.
• Proposed Budget and Detail FY24, 6 pages.
• Proposed Budget and Detail FY25, 11 pages.
• Proposed Budget and Detail FY25-Levenson Structure, 21 pages.
• Proposed Budget and Detail FY25-Levenson Structure (2nd vote, 4/16/24 section), 5 pages.
• Proposed Budget and Detail FY26, 4 pages.
• FY19 Final Audit, 107 pages.
• FY20 Final Audit, 108 pages.
• FY21 Final Audit, 111 pages.
• FY22 Final Audit, 110 pages.
• FY23 Final Audit, 110 pages.
• FY24 Final Audit, 108 pages.
• FY25 Final Audit, 105 pages.
• Enrollment by School FY93-FY25 (Google Sheet, exported as xlsx).

Consumer prices: Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U, all items, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted, as published by the St. Louis Fed (FRED series CPIAUCNS), fetched October 8, 2026. Fiscal-year averages of the twelve monthly values July to June: FY2020 257.23, FY2025 317.73 (+23.5%); June 2020 257.80 to June 2025 322.56 (+25.1%). The page uses the fiscal-year averages.

Rules

• The state's per-pupil figure is shown as printed. Education spending per weighted pupil is the Agency of Education's own figure from its yearly “School District Spending Per Pupil” workbook, with the latest year from the district's own AOE form. Equalized pupils (through FY2024) and long-term weighted ADM (from FY2025) are two measures; they are never joined or compared across that line.
• Scores are for the same fiscal year as the spending figures. The state assessment tile is the share of students proficient or above on the VTCAP for FY2025 (school year 2024-25), the last year of the “spent” window, all tested grades, student-weighted, from the Agency of Education's dashboard files. The panel under the tiles sets the headline numbers beside the peer districts, with the Stanford Education Data Archive's comparison against what communities like this one typically score (latest published year, labeled). No composite rating is made, and the comparison is shown beside the actual results, never in place of them.
• Two windows, never mixed. “Spent” compares the FY2020 and FY2025 actuals in the audited Schedule B, the same window as the WCUUSD page. “Budgeted” compares the original budgets for the same two years from the same schedules. The FY2019 audit is in the CSVs and a FY2019-to-FY2025 window is given in the changes files.
• Ranked both ways. Every change chart shows the same rows twice, ranked by percent change and by dollar change, in both directions. Shares are shares of the net change in the total, the FY2025 total less the FY2020 total.
• Two groupings one level down. The three groups with the largest dollar change and the three with the largest percent change each get the same three views for their audit rows, where the group has rows beneath it. The dollar contributors chart takes the fifteen rows with the largest dollar change across every group; the percent contributors chart takes the fifteen with the largest percent change among rows of at least $50,000 in FY2025 actual.
• Groups are the audit's own. A group is a section the audit subtotals in Schedule B, or a row it prints on its own and adds straight into the total; the page uses the printed figure, never a recomputed sum. Rows are compared where the same row is printed in both years; the only wording change across the seven audits is “Board of education” (FY2019–FY2021) and “Board of Education” (FY2022 on), one row. Rows printed in one year only are listed with no change figure.
• Per student uses fall enrollment of the schools MAUSD ran that year, not the weighted pupil count. The Agency of Education's October head count of students by grade (its “Fall ADM” collection, grades PK–12) for Bristol, Monkton, Beeman and Robinson elementary schools and Mt Abraham Union Middle/High, plus Lincoln Community School through FY2023, same fiscal year, using the file's own total row for each school. Lincoln is dropped from FY2024 because the district stopped running the school on July 1, 2023 and its costs left the budget; the six-school figure is given in the text above for comparison. The district's own per-pupil figures are the state's weighted pupil counts (equalized pupils through FY2024, long-term weighted average daily membership from FY2025 under Act 127), a funding measure that runs far above any head count: 1,981.36 for FY2025 against 1,254 students enrolled.

Caveats

• Lincoln's withdrawal sits inside the window. The FY2020 side of every comparison is a five-town district with five elementary schools; the FY2025 side is a four-town district with four. The district warned that prior-year comparisons are “misleading” (2023 annual report, p. 45) and restated no earlier column. The page keeps the printed figures on both sides and drops Lincoln's students from the denominator at the same date.
• The FY2025 budget took three votes: $37,014,566 as first proposed failed on March 5, 2024 (1,113 to 1,341); a second proposal failed on April 16, 2024 (907 to 964); the adopted budget of $35,381,196 passed on June 11, 2024 (1,243 to 743) (2026 annual report, pp. 24 and 27). The page's FY2025 original budget is the adopted figure, as the audit prints it. The FY2027 budget of $37,862,780 was warned as Article 10 for March 3, 2026 (2026 annual report, p. 40); no document used here records the result.
• The audit's totals and the district's own “Total Expenditures” agree within $1,500 from FY2021 on but not before: FY2019 actual $28,501,269 in the audit against $28,219,670 in the district's table, FY2020 $29,721,428 against $29,979,105. The audit's FY2023 original budget ($32,614,103) is $51,208 below the budget warned and adopted for FY2023 ($32,665,311). The district's table is in the functions CSV under its own basis.
• From the FY2026 budget the district presents eighteen tabs instead of seventeen functions, and no actual has been printed in either structure for FY2024 or FY2025; those two years' actuals exist only in the audits, which is why the audit is the page's basis.
• The state's FY2018 enrollment file lists every school at roughly double its count in the adjacent years and is left out of the enrollment line.
• Rows the audit stopped printing by FY2025: special education administration (last printed FY2022), sPED health services (last printed FY2020), student transportation - SPED (last printed FY2022). Their dollars are in the groups' subtotals in the year they were printed.